I know the sign says "Children Food" but it’s really a candy store. I’ve seen the candy stores that are in every neighborhood throughout Beijing and Shanghai . They remind me of the candy stores that can be found at the malls in America. They have bins and bins and bins of candy, all of it overpriced. But, where else will you find such an assortment of great wonderful sweet things to eat?

This is the Jade Buddha Temple in Shanghai, China. It has a Jade Buddha. I would have taken a picture of the Jade Buddha, but pictures were not allowed. I’m sure I could have snuck one, but this is Communist China, after all. There are a lot of people I’ll mess with and even more people that I couldn’t possibly take seriously, even on a bet. However, when it comes to messing with the Chinese government, I don’t. It seems that millions and millions of people have simply "disappeared" here in the last century. I don’t want some petty incident with someone in a uniform to cause my wife to wonder where I am. It was bad enough that I snuck in to see the Jade Buddha in the middle of a group of French tourists.

This is a picture of a bowl of noodles and a beer from a P. C. Lee restaurant in Shanghai. Mr. Lee claims to have around 400 restaurant scattered throughout China. I have no idea if that’s true, but I do know that I’ve seen a few of them since I’ve been here. The dinner set me back $3. The noodles had a chicken leg buried in the middle of them and they were reasonably good. If there’s one thing I’m not, it’s a noodle critic, but I figured that for $3 it was a fair meal. What impressed me most was that the waiter who took my order had a hand-held electronic device for taking the order and sending it to the cooks. Everything on the menu had a number and my table had a number. Very high-tech.

I went to the Shanghai Museum to try and learn a little something about the history of Shanghai. It seems that it has quite the history. It was a great port, an economic miracle, a place where the British brought opium to China by the boatload and left with tea, silk and other goods. It was a place where violence reigned for decades. It was an Asian Wild West. I would have liked to have gotten a little more information on the city, but the museum was closed. Oh well, another day , perhaps.

The Shanghai World Financial Center is supposed to have the world’s highest observatory. I don’t know if it is the world’s highest observatory or not. I do know that if it is, the odds on it staying so are slim and none.

The Shanghai Customs House, built in 1927, is, supposedly, a customs house even today. It is one of the "classical" buildings on The Bund. The clock on the building, modeled after Big Ben in London, is said to be the largest clock in Asia.

The Shanghai Metro is great. I buy a ticket every day for about $2.50 that gives me unlimited rides. I took this picture because I like the Metro sign in between the massive apartment structures. It’s so urban.

The lines are incredibly long at the Shanghai Railway Station. It may be days before you can get a train out of town. I had to wait six days before my train leaves. That’s because I decided to come to China and move around during a period which included October 1st. That might not mean much to most people , but October 1st is National Day (July 4th) in China and it’s the second most important holiday in China. Hundreds of millions of Chinese will be traveling. Think about it – hundreds of millions – and the vast majority don’t even have a driver’s license. Ask me if the trains fill up fast.